


Wannabes

by Nope



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-06
Updated: 2009-09-06
Packaged: 2018-10-25 02:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Micah tries to convince Sylar that they can be heroes.





	1. Chapter 1

_"You do not choose your destiny. It chooses you. And_  
those who knew you before fate took you by the hand  
can not understand the depth of the changes inside." 

 

** Wannabes **

**_fade in:_  
i. diverge among the dead men **

"He's just a kid."

The hesitant flash of a laser sight, radio squawking, all, "I said take him down, now," and Micah watches Micah's lip curl up.  It's the wrong face for that expression.

Danko yells, "Take him down!"

The shot turns Micah -- Sylar -- the shot turns Sylar.  He twists as he falls, pained grunts at the impact with the edge of the pier.  High, a child's sound.  Then the sharp, cold splash.

_So_ , Micah thinks, feeling oddly detached from this, like he's watching a movie -- though he can smell the cordite in the air, oil, sweat that he hopes isn't himself --  _this is what it's like to watch yourself die._

There's a plan, he's supposed to be in the car, but instead he presses close to the icy, slick metal and watches the soldiers scour the black water.  In his head, he counts,  _one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three_.  How long can he -- can you -- can I hold our breath for?

Danko's pissed.  He covers it, but Micah's been watching.  Rebel's been watching.  All those cameras, known and unknown.  He's Argus now, ten thousand eyes.  Death has made him mythological.  (He's always been too precocious for his own good, is the problem.  Part of the problem.)  Danko's pissed and he's suddenly looking right this way, like he  _knows._

The metal is cold and wet and something oily trickles down his neck when he presses against it and he thinks,  _I've never been as alone as I am right now_.

And he has to keep going because he's pulled off the Hail Mary but the ball's still in play and if he stops, if he's not fast enough and smart enough and sure enough, the Bogeyman comes out and all bets are off.

_Molly is going to--_

There's a gap, and he runs, from thought and soldiers both.

 

**ii. softly, softly, catchee monkey**

"This was very unlike you," Danko says.  He's still looking at the water.  Won't look at Sylar.  Disgust, perhaps.  Disappointment?  Who really cares?

"Dead is dead," Sylar tells him.  He's trying not to laugh.  There's a certain childish glee to this whole thing, and never mind that Danko's right, that this isn't him.  He is Sylar, he knows.  The hunter, not the prey.

The system has been compromised.  Steps will have to be taken.

"You can start tonight," Danko says.  "Just as soon as you change your face."

Danko stalks away.  It's all very dramatic.  Sylar can't help smirking.  This is a much better face for it.  He follows at a much more sedate pace, at a slow, easy lope.  Wolves take care of the weak.  It makes the herd stronger.  His father was wrong about that, too.

The car is waiting for him.  Taub drives it past another of those nameless soldiers, lets them glance across the empty seats and see nothing.  He takes the back roads.  It's night and they're empty and the street lamps stroke him, one by one by one.  The radio comes on.  Roy Orbison is cry-i-i-i-ing over you.  Classic.

Sylar adjusts the mirror until he can see Micah in it, and he's only slightly smirking, only faintly mocking, when he asks, "Now what, hero?"

 

** iii. union station blue **

The world is full of machines.  In a car in the Nevada desert, miles from anywhere, Micah could hear Vegas in his sleep, singing him lullabies.  In D.C. it's orchestras, Philharmonic gone digital, cyber-reverb, techno overdub; 3G phones sing out in joyful chorus over the bass clicks of the switching stations, the iron hum of the trains, the clattering chatter of the departure boards, the tourist laptop drums and watch-tick snares.  It's too loud in his head, thrumming in him, but Micah doesn't care.  It's glorious.  How could anyone think this would be overkill?

He finds the most crowded rack of phones and picks one in the middle, resting with his back to the security camera.  It winks at him.  The phone clicks a demand for money in his ear.  He caresses its silver body until it purrs.  Jungle sounds, now, squawking phones, roaring engines, wires rustling like vines.  His is the India of Mowgli and Kim, of Kaa and the Bander-log, of Shere Khan burning brightly in the dark.  He hides in the noise and lets his fingers dial for him.  Country code, exchange, area, 926-6223.

It's like being made of water, just flowing along.  It's like being made of spirit.  Ghost in the machine.

There's a connection.  A click.  No one speaks, but he can hear held breath.   _Good girl_ , he thinks, and says, "Molly.  It's me.  The line's clean."

"Micah?" she asks, half hesitant, half-hopeful.

It rushes through him, makes him feel  _real_  again, and he's grinning like a loon when he repeats, "It's me."

"I thought you were  _dead_ ," she says, sounding pissed at him now, and it just makes him laugh.  "It's not funny!"

"No.  I know."  He's still chuckling though.  "It's just-- It's good to hear you."

"You too.  Are you--"  She sounds confused, starts to say something that sounds like 'where' but can't be, because Molly always knows where everybody is.  That's what she does.  But she still sounds confused, and when she says, "You're at the train station?" it's more question than statement.

This body is, he wants to say, but my mind-- He doesn't know to describe it.  It's like.  Electricity.  It's electricity.

Molly is saying, "West and Sparrow -- everyone was worried.  I can call them.  They can come and get you and--"

"No," Micah says, and louder when she keeps going, "Molly, no.  They have to stay away.  It's not safe."

"But they can help," she insists.  "It's what we do, remember?"

"Not this time," he says and, over her protest, "No, listen.  I got compromised.  I wasn't fast enough, and Danko got into my systems.  He has dozens of us, now."

Molly huffs.  "That's why you need help,  _Micah_."

"They can't.  It's--"  He can't explain Sylar.  He can't.  "Complicated.  It's.  Please, Molly."

The silence at the other end of the line is too deep, too long.

"Micah," she says, the accusation plain in her voice long before she asks.  "What did you do?"

"People are going to get hurt," he tells her, talking too fast, "and we have to stop that; we have to, Molly.  They're paying for our, for  _my_  mistakes.  But I can fix this.  I need you to help me fix this.  It's, it's going to be okay, I promise, he's not--"

"He's not  _what_?"  Anger, fear, sharp in her tone.

"We can't just protect the good guys," Micah says.  He's holding the phone so tight his hand hurts.  "We have to save everybody.  We have to try."

Molly practically spits. "He's a killer."

"I know--"

"No!  You weren't there.  He killed them, he killed--" But she can't get the words out.

"I killed my parents," Micah says.  He doesn't mean to.  It just slips out.  His tongue is a traitor.  He closes his eyes, rests his head on his arm on the phone.

Molly makes a noise, half sob, half bitter laugh.  She sniffs, says, "Don't."

They're both quiet.  He wants to tell her it's all going to be okay, but he knows how that sounds.

Her voice is so small when she says, "He's there, with you, isn't he?  The Boogeyman."

"I can't do this without you."  Micah knows Sylar was wrong.  He's not alone.  He's not.  "Please.  ...Molly?"

"If he-- Is he.  Is he making you do this?  You've gotta-- We can rescue you, I promise," she says desperately.

Micah shakes his head, realizes she can't see it, says, "It's not like that.  The ability he has, he can make them stop.  The Petrellis and the Dankos, Primatech and Pinehurst and everything.  He can make them stop.  I can make him."

He listens to Molly breathe.  She's using the pink iPhone he got for her.  It's full of media files, bright pop and Bollywood numbers and spiritual sounding things by Indian bands he doesn't know.  There are photos, Matt, Mohinder, Mrs. Suresh, spires and temples and endless steps down to a sacred river.  There are no photos of him, of course, or West, or Sparrow, or Abigail.  There's an old picture, scanned in just off-vertical, of a laughing girl and her parents.

"Send me the photos," Molly says, sounding tired, resigned.  "I'll do it.  But I'm turning my phone off afterwards."

"Yeah," he says.  He writes his memories of names and faces onto her SD-card, pushing them down the wire over the protests of the network, under the sudden complaints of those around him as their calls fade and crackle.  "Thank you."

"I mean it, Micah.  You can't-- He's not a stray," she insists.  "You can't house-break him."

"It's just for now," Micah says, and it feels like a lie, and he's sure it sounds like one, because Molly hangs up on him.  He says "Goodbye" to the empty line.

 

** iv. travelling man **

The sun's come up and it turns the windscreen opaque, but Micah can still feel Sylar watching him.  He finds the door, lets himself in.  The car pulls away.  Morning traffic is beginning, but the roads are still mostly clear.  They drive sedately.

"All sorted with your little girlfriend?" Sylar asks.

Micah doesn't rise to the bait.  "She'll find them."

The radio comes on.  Elvis singing for Del Shannon.   _Run, run, run, run, runaway._

Sylar chuckles, whistles along.  It's a smooth ride.  The car, some Nissan or other, practically drives itself.  Maybe that's just Micah.  They hit all the green lights and Sylar asks, "What makes you think I won't kill them all myself?"

"You're not that person."

"Hate to disappoint you, kid," Sylar drawls, "but I've been that person."

"I'm here," Micah points out, digging in his backpack.  He's lost his jacket somewhere, but it's warm enough in the car, especially once he has his laptop out.

"Don't count on that lasting," Sylar says, watching the road, fingers tapping absent rhythms on the steering wheel as he takes the ramp.

The laptop goes sliding, but Micah catches it, plugs peripherals in with deft precision.  The car weaves across the lanes, doing a steady three miles over the limit, not too slow, not too fast.  Chameleonic.  Micah flips a toggle, pushes his way in through the back-doors of the cell phone networks.

"It's called onion routing," he says, though Sylar doesn't ask.  "I use multiple levels of encryption and mix cascades to hide where my connection is coming from and going to.  As long as we don't stay still for too long, they can't trace my routing back to me.  That's where I went wrong before, I think."

"Clever," Sylar says.  It sounds more bored than sarcastic.  He drives, heading vaguely west for no particular reason.  The laptop bleeps softly, names and faces flickering across the display.  A boy with impenetrable skin.  A woman who can confuse memories.  A girl with a healing touch.  A man with resistance to poison.  Nothing that he can't mimic in his own way already.

_All the leaves are brown_ , the radio tells him,  _and the sky is grey_.

"You can save them all," Micah says.  Sylar chuckles, looks away.  "You've done it before.  You saved Rachel St. John, and you didn't kill Michael Fitzgerald or Tina Ramierez.  You didn't kill Luke Campbell, or the Agents they sent after you.  You should have lost your telekinesis to the Shanti virus, but you kept it because you felt empathy for Brian Davis.  When you were with Arthur Petrelli, you copied Elle's ability--"

"I killed her in the end," Sylar says.

"She wouldn't let you be what you could be."

"A hero?" Sylar scoffs.

"Somebody important.  Somebody who makes a difference."

 

** v. building **

Molly comes through.

It's not Building 26, but it might as well be.  The list, the smallest abilities, the easiest captures -- Danko's team went through it fast.  There are others out there.  The harder ones.  The ones Danko would send Sylar after, if they could pull this off.  If they could keep the secret.

Danko's people have gotten smarter.  Not a lot, but enough to keep a separate network, cut off from the outside.  Still, everyone has phones, nice, new, modern cell phones with their built in Bluetooth and 3G capabilities.  One indiscreet use of iTunes gets Micah a finger hold.  After that, it's easy.  All the firewalls and SPF record checking in the world can't spot a fake when it's coming from the same machine it's being read on.  Formal notification: minor staff visit, operations issue, standard escort.

You wouldn't think Luke had boiled Simmons alive to watch the man drive confidently up to the gate, right on the dot.  Military precision.  It's trained in timekeeping; ingrained; in the blood.  They let him through with only a cursory inspection.  The parking lot is underground.  A few vans, no people, a minimum of cameras.  Electronic locks.  They've hardly thought this through.

Once you're inside, you're in control.

 

** vi. cooler **

"What's the score?" Simmons, Sylar asks, leaning on the cubicle wall.  Micah's out of sight.  Computer whisperer, cajoling alarms here, herding data there.  Simmons smiles at the girl in the cubicle, a bottle brunette, mousey turned multi-toned auburn.  "We get the full dozen?"

"A baker's round," the woman says, lifting a hand to brush her hair back behind one ear, smiling at him, a little casual, a little flirty.  "And not one hit on ours."

Sylar lets his smile go wider, lets her think she caused it.  "All sleepin' soundly as a baby."

"Or sounder," she agrees.  There must be something in his eyes, because her smile turns darker.  "You didn't hear?"  She leans towards him, conspiratorially.  "They brought a bag in."

There's a discordant beep from the computer.

"Hell," Sylar chuckles, "maybe they're the lucky ones.  Would you want to sleep the rest of your life away?"

"Maybe if I had company," she says, and they both smile.

"I have to do some inspecting," Sylar says, with just enough reluctance in his voice.  "Maybe I'll see you on the way out."

"Maybe you will," she says, favoring him with a promising look.

"Don't work too hard, now."

"I work as hard as the government does," she says, and they share a laugh, nodding their  _au revoirs_.  The cameras snap off, one by one.  The elevator indicator says going up on the outside, but down on the inside.  Sylar arches an eyebrow but lets the doors close.

 

** vii. down among the dead **

Morgues shouldn't smell like hospitals, Micah thinks.  All antiseptic and sick.  It does though, this too bright room, all brushed metal and unfiltered fluorescence.  His mother was in a room like this, once.  His father.  The computer labels the drawers by case number.  It's a sequential field, automatic, already far too high.  One of these numbers is Daphne.  One is Tracy Strauss.  One might be Daniel Hawkins.  What's one more conspiracy?

One is fresh from the field.  Micah palms the lock open, but it's Sylar who opens the door, who pulls the tray out.

Micah refuses to be sick.  He refuses.

The worst part isn't the damage.  It's the way there's enough left of this cut, crushed thing, that they can still make out the vestiges of a face, the last few strains of identity.  Strands of hair cling to a concave skull.

"Gabrielle," Micah says.  "Her name was Gabrielle."

Gabrielle was a vet.  She made a living making animals better.  Adults liked her, kids and pets loved her.  She had a magical touch.  Light hands.  She made lives better, and now there's nothing left of her but a torn bag of skin, a cache of broken bones.  There's no point to this.  No point at all.

It hasn't been long enough for formal reports to be in the system.  Micah's relying on this, on the confusion, but he can't help wondering.  What will Gabrielle's say?  Was she 'resisting arrest'?  Micah knows what that means.  It means you stand there and let them hit you, or they hit you for resisting.  It means you don't get out of the place they put you in.  You don't be smarter, or faster, or stronger, or anything.  You don't be special.

Bullies.  It's all just bullies.

("You get in a fight at school today?" D.L. asks.

He's holding out a sandwich, and Micah takes it, saying, "It was nothing.  Just some jerks, that's all."

This is where Niki would lecture, but D.L says, "Just want to know if you won, that's all."

"Yeah," Micah says.  "I won.")

He reaches out to touch her, but he can't make himself.

"Gabrielle Marcus," Micah says.  "She was one of us."  He corrects himself.  "She  _is_  one of us."

They can't take the body with them, but Sylar can press his fingers together, building the shakes until, when he clicks his fingers, there's a crack like thunder and then only dust, pink and grey, whispering down in dainty rivulets from the slab.

"This is why they have to be stopped," Micah says.  "It's wrong.  It's just plain wrong."

He's not crying.  He's not.  He's too angry for that.

 

** viii. seven thunders **

It's so easy, it's almost criminal.

Micah's talent more than outmatches the internal systems; it subsumes them, making the building an extension of self.  They walk past closed circuit cameras, invisible to the electronic eye.  Sylar takes care of the lone guard, knocking him out with a flick of his fingers.  Micah waves the door open, moving swiftly from bed to bed, killing the anesthetic.  People wake up slow, groggy and dry-mouthed.  Micah gives orders with an authority that belies his age, ordering them to follow Sylar, and herding them towards the door when they just blink at him stupidly.

The fire suppression systems love him.  They start crying with joy all over the building.  Alarms scream in triumph.

Sylar thinks Elle would have appreciated this and sends sparks into the rain.  Not enough to kill.  Enough to stun, though.  Enough to hurt.  They fall like dominoes.  Seems cubicle girl won't see them on the way out after all.  Sylar finds himself wondering what her name was, and then wondering why he's even interested.  He keeps the people moving.

Micah finds one in particular, pulls her aside.  "Abigail," he says.  "We need you.  They can't know we were here."

"I can't."  She shakes her head rapidly, shakes her whole body.  The sprinklers have woken them up, but soaked them through.  "I've never -- I just can't."

"You can," Micah says, taking her hands in his.  "It's okay.  They're all asleep.  Sylar did that. He made it safe for us.  You won't hurt them.  You'll just confuse them a little bit.  It's okay."

And it is.  He breathes, and she breathes, and  _something_  ripples through the building around them.  It's done.

Then they're moving again, Sylar in front, tossing the last few straggling guards into the nearest walls, and forcing the escapees into the vans.  Sylar takes his car; sure, it's stolen, and he's going to have to dump it anyway, but it's his, now, and better by himself anyway.  That confusion thing was starting to seem a little tempting, even if it was mostly pointless.  Micah doesn't say anything.  When Sylar drives, the vans fall in behind him like ducklings.

The traffic cameras' gazes slide off them like water off a cygnet's back.

He's thinking about swans and old fairy tales and if they call them that when there's no fairies in them, just talking animals (and does even that count if they only talk to other animals?), and half-wondering if somehow the confusion thing can't work on awake people too, and it takes him a moment to realize he's brought them all to the park.  There are clothes here, and a little bit of money each courtesy of Micah and ATMs.  Some morality is clearly more flexible than others.

They're all looking at him for answers, eyes bright and needy.  Sylar waits for Micah to speak, but the boy doesn't, has gotten himself lost in the background, so Sylar simply says, "You're free."

They're all free.

There's a yell from the crowd, his name, not Gabriel with Maya's accent, but Sylar, with her tone, the way she said it before she knew the other part of him.  The way she said it after she knew he'd killed, before it became personal.  Hope.  Worship.  Sylar.  Someone takes up the call and then they're chanting, all of them, "Sylar! Sylar! Sylar!"

It rises around him, and he starts laughing, lifting his arms, and they're laughing too, laughing and crying and cheering around him, and, when he catches a glimpse of Micah, transformed by a huge smile, he can't help grinning back.


	2. Chapter 2

** ix. escher in the now **

The only limits are physical, but that's more than enough.  There's only so far you can bend things before they break.  There's only so much data you can fit down a line, only so fast you can write files or read them.  There's only so far you can go without power.

Breaking the encryption takes him longer than it should have and Micah finds himself missing Hana, not for the first time, nor the last.  He pushes the thought away.  There'll be time for that when he's done.

N.W.A. invective on the radio.  Hip hop gone gangsta.  Sylar likes the rhythm, the anger.  Micah would have to listen to have an opinion, and he isn't.  His hand is over the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the laptop screen, on the windows flickering open and closed.  Most of them are blank.

"Let's just blow the doors off," Sylar says.

Micah shakes his head.  "If we go in blind, they could just kill everyone."

This one, they've given thought to.  Independent generators, electromagnetic shielding, each camera on a separate circuit with multiple overlaps to eliminate blind spots.  Reinforced and plated walls.  Minimal distortion, bullet-proof glass.  Bladed, electrified fences, nested inside each other in wide spaces.  There's some cover, of course, there has to be, to maintain the bland illusion of just another warehouse district, but not enough to be of any real use.  You'd have to be impossibly smart, ridiculously lucky, or simply not care about being caught to get inside.  And then what?  Micah couldn't even tell if the place was actually inside the warehouse, or under it, or somewhere else completely, joined by secret tunnels.

It's like they took Level 5 and decided they weren't being horribly paranoid enough.

The building -- it's referred to, and then only obliquely, as 'A' -- connects to the outside world by laser burst.  It's scheduled, limited, uninterruptable.  He can't work out what error checking mechanism they're using, but a single doubled packet on his first try caused so many counter-attacks he had to take out AT&T for an hour in self-defense.

He's blind.  He hates not knowing things.

A phone ringing distracts him and Micah searches his peripherals with a glance before realizing it's Taub's phone.  He knows it's Danko, doesn't need to check the screen to confirm, and says so, dropping the phone on the desk.

Sylar picks it up, flips it open, watching the windows flicker on the laptop screen.

** x. other people's problems **

Taub saunters in to Building 26 like he owns the place.  No one gives him a second thought.  No reason they should.  He sits at his desk and plays with the computer for a bit, deleting the spam that's managed to sneak in, chuckling over the new list of potential Sylar sightings in places he's never been, forwarding a few jokes and YouTube links on.  Taub likes cheap laughs, cheap cigars, cheap women, a man or two, expensive guns and liquors.  He sends his ex half his pay check every month on the strict condition that she never mentions their son.

The things you learn about a person when you go through all their stuff.

Danko sticks his head out of his office, says something to Jackie (spends all her free time volunteering in charity shelters for battered women) and Aaron (spends all his free time growing pot in a tent in his bathroom) and then nods at him.  "Quick word?"

"Yes, boss," Taub says, pushing away from the desk.  Chairs with wheels.  Great idea.  Stylish, ergonomic and useful.  An admirable use of government money, Sylar thinks, letting Taub smirk as he lopes into Danko's office and throws himself down in a handy chair.

Danko is saying something innocuous as he closes the door and then the blinds, and Taub doesn't listen, plucking the paperweight off a pile of photos -- Hiro, Matt, Micah, Luke, others -- and tossing it idly from hand to hand.  It makes no difference, really, since as soon as they're alone, Danko flips between casual and irate, snatches the paperweight away, and slams it down on the desk.

"Where were you?" he demands.

"I had things to take care of," Sylar says, leaning forward a little in his seat.  Danko doesn't twitch at the change, but he leans back in his own chair, and that's gratifying enough.

He expects a lecture, but Danko just opens up his laptop, hits a few keys, and turns it round.  The photo is a little pixelated (not too much, even crap phones come with 10 mega-pixel cameras these days), and a lot out of focus, but Sylar recognizes the corridor and can put two and two together.

"Things?" Danko asks.

"Things," Sylar agrees.  "I'm looking at...  A blur.  You've taken a photograph of a blur.  Congratulations."

"All the people with low level abilities that we got from Rebel's system," Danko says, "were found and released within hours of being picked up.  While you were taking care of things."

Sylar shrugs.  "You don't need me for that."  He deliberately pauses, considering, says, "Well, if you can't keep them corralled, maybe you do; but I'm not interested."

Danko starts ranting about, what, Sylar doesn't really care.  Rebel and loose ends and all that crap.  Mostly he's watching the man's shaking hands, his too bright eyes, that unhealthy pallor.  You're coming apart, Sylar thinks.  Poor Mister Danko.

"--you running off the rails, I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't--"

"Rebel's not just one person," Sylar says.  That gets Danko's attention.  "It's a team."

"A team," Danko repeats with suspicion.

"Talking of loose ends," Sylar says, mildly.

"You know this for certain?" Danko asks, sinking back into his chair.

"What can I say?  You raise a boy on comic-books, he gets some strange ideas.  Saturday morning cartoon morality."  Sylar smiles.  "Four color fight scenes, neat resolutions and a catchy theme song.  They get so uncomfortable with shades of grey."

Danko's mouth twitches up.  It might be a smile.

"Do you have names?"

"A few."  He can give them West, and Sparrow -- she was already on the plane, once; it's nothing new -- and he opens his mouth to say that Molly Walker is in India and hears himself say, instead, "Viva Libertad."

It means nothing to him, but it clearly does to Danko.

"Spanish," Sylar muses out loud.  "Claire Bennet is in Mexico, isn't she?"

"Reportedly," Danko agrees.

"And she was helping Doyle," Sylar says.

Danko is quiet for a moment.  Sylar lets him think, retrieving the paperweight, turning it over in his hands.  It's blocky, amorphous, a triumph of function over form, comfortably heavy.  Two swift blows would take care of Danko for good, and then Sylar could just put on his face and go outside and... Do what?

He realizes Danko is talking, and forces himself to listen long enough to realize Danko is trying to send him to Mexico.

"Been there, done that, got the shirt," he says.  Shirt.  Virus.  Whichever.  "No, I'll be here.  The 'more dangerous ones', like you said."  He grins.  "Maybe this time you'll actually get to keep them."

Danko smiles thinly.

** xi. mirror mirror **

"He's suspicious," Micah says.

He hasn't got any further since Sylar was out.  Frustration drives his fingers harder against the keys.  There's no rhythm to the sound and Sylar flicks the stereo volume up.  Freddie Mercury sings.  Dynamite with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow their minds.  Sylar chuckles a little, throwing himself down on the couch.

"Of course he is.  There's nothing more paranoid than little men of power.  They get just far enough to see how precariously they are balanced, how truly expendable they are.  And then," Sylar says, laying back, his head resting on his hands, "they start wondering just how much their ends can justify their means.  They become partners with killers and they say it's necessity, that it's better than the alternatives."

"I'm nothing like Danko," Micah says sharply.  "He wants you to be a killer, because that's all he understands.  That's why he fears us; he knows he'd use his abilities for evil, so he expects everyone else too.  We disgust him because he disgusts himself."

"Daytime television psychology," Sylar scoffs.

"We don't have to be anything they expect us to be," Micah says, ignoring this.  "We're new."

"There's nothing new under the sun, kid," Sylar says.  "Haven't you gotten inside yet?"

"Maybe if you didn't keep interrupting me," Micah says, just loud enough to be heard.

It's childish, and so is Sylar's smirk.  The stereo announces they are princes of the universe.  The laptop announces there's new mail.

It's for Taub.

** xii.  euphemistic **

By rights, Sylar should have arrived on the scene first, bagged the catch and been on his way but, in an unprecedented case of being good at their jobs, Taub's team gets there first.  He's forced to waste ten minutes while they get their asses kicked so he can slip away and do the thing properly.

This one's power is almost interesting: claps that blast outwards, a vortex of concussive force.  It's ridiculously loud though -- and for once Sylar is thankful he no longer has the enhanced hearing -- and hardly exact.  He can read rather inventive curses off the woman's lips when she accidentally strikes her own couch, tearing it into a whirlwind of fabric and wooden splinters.  It's amusing enough to be distracting, something he's never admitting, and she actually clips him with the next shot.  The Cheerleader takes care of his shoulder, though, and Jesse lets him give as well as he takes.

Taub stops to check if she's still breathing, just as the team regroup.  They're down four, although they prove only critical, not dead.  The same can't be said for the apartment or much of the building and, since they've already evacuated the other residences, Taub blows a gas-main to cover their tracks.

Those who can, take the van back, guns trained on the woman despite the drug pipe shoved up her nose.

"We're going to run out of beds at this rate," someone says.

(Sylar really should learn their names.  Taub would know them.)

"Not if they keep breaking out as fast as we pick them," another says with disgust.  He might be a Jones or maybe a Johnson.  Something with a J.

"They won't," the third man -- Gordon? -- says.  "Not for long, not if what I've been hearing is true."  The others all look at him and he grins.  "I know this girl -- Bonnie, works in the West Wing secretarial pool.  She says Danko has been pushing for a meeting with the president to ask for a permanent solution."

"Permanent as in--" Jones-Johnson asks.

"One in the head, two in the chest," Gordon says.

"Damn," says the one who complained first and then, off their looks, "Hell, you know they're going to have us digging the damn graves, man.  Shit."

There are laughs all around.  Taub chuckles along.  Sylar thinks about the flick of fingers, about throats unfurling like flowers, red as a rose's petals.

** xiii. sound the light **

Dialing faster makes no difference, of course it doesn't, but Micah's hand barely brushes the phone and it's already pumped all the numbers out.  The exchange mumbles in complaint.  He doesn't bother with Molly's own phone, just goes straight to the Suresh residence.  He's on a street corner, listening to the cars slow down and speed up around him, to the ringing of the phone, to his too shallow, too fast breath, his too loud heart.

When Mrs Suresh answers the phone in Hindi, he has to swallow twice before he can force out a greeting, and then he has to correct himself for the time difference, so it's, "Good evening, Mrs Suresh.  This is Micah Sanders?  I don't know if you remember me."

"Of course, I do," she says, cheerfully enough.  "Such a handsome lad."

"Uh.  Thank you."  Molly, Molly, go get Molly.  "How are you?"

"And polite too!  I am doing well, thank you," she says.  "And yourself?"

For a second, he honestly doesn't know how to answer that question.  He mumbles some sort of affirmative sounding thing and hopes it will suffice.  "Is Molly there?  I wanted to surprise her."

"She's just upstairs; I'll call her for you," Mrs Suresh says.

There's an amused undercurrent to her voice and he can hear Sylar saying 'your little girlfriend'.  He manages a thank you over it. At a great distance, he can hear Mrs Suresh calling for Ujala.  Light, he thinks.  Brilliance.

"There's a call for you," Mrs Suresh says, and Micah hears Molly answer, "Who is it?" even as she's taking the phone.  "Hello?  Mohinder?"

"Don't hang up," Micah says.

There's a pause, but no cut-off.  He makes himself breathe properly.  Meditation is good for the soul.

Molly says, "That was a cheap trick."

"I know."

Mrs Suresh says something inquisitive in the background.  Molly says, "It's okay, Grandma," and the sound around her changes.  She's moved rooms, closed a door, maybe.  They're alone.

"You can't do this," Molly says.

"I know," Micah repeats, "but it's gotten worse--"

"Of course it has!" Molly snaps.  "What did you think would happen?  I told you that you couldn't trust him!"

"Not him!  He helped save people," Micah insists.  "We got them out because of him."

Molly snorts.  "So he lets one go now and again.  Big deal."

"That's not--  That's not why I'm calling.  Danko's trying to-- They're not going to keep us anymore.  They're going to kill." She doesn't respond.  Micah tries again. "He's trying to make it so he can kill everyone with abilities."

"Is--"  Molly hesitates, pushes on.  "Is it because you've been breaking people out?  Is it because of what you're doing?"

"No!" says Micah, all instant outrage, except it feels like a lie.  He's seen Batman.  Escalation happens.  "It just makes rescuing them even more important.  Look, that's-- There's this building, highest security.  I can't get in."

"Highest security," Molly repeats.

"They're holding people," Micah insists.  "People like us."

"Which us?" Molly asks.  "People like West, like Sparrow or Abigail?  Or people like Maury, or Linderman, or Doyle?  People like Sylar?"

"Molly--"

"No!  Do you think you can just cajole these people into being nice?"  Molly demands.  "That if you just let them run off alone into the streets, everything will be fine?  You're just one kid!"

"I can help them," Micah says, wanting to mean it.  "I have to."

"Like this?"

"Yes," he insists.  "I'll keep them right, train them--  I don't-- Please, Molly.  I can't get anyone else killed.  I just can't."

"Oh, Micah."

"I can't do this without you," he says, begs.

"Then don't do it," Molly says tightly.  "Just.  Leave him.  Call Sparrow.  Call West.  Come to Chennai.  Grandma will let you stay.  You can stay.  We'll work everything out, together, I promise.  Please, Micah."

And he wants to, he wants to so much, but, "I can't, Molly.  You don't understand.  I can't."

"Explain it to me, then.  You're supposed to be so smart.  Explain it to me."

He thinks she might be crying.  He really hopes she isn't.  He just says "I can't" again.

There's a long quiet and the Molly says, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry, Micah.  Don't call me again."

"Wait," he says, but he's already talking to an empty carrier signal, "Wait, please, wait."

There's no-one.  No-one at all.  So that's it, then.  Game over.  You lost.  He hangs the phone up.  Nothing doing.  He stares at the numbers and the letters and his distorted reflection in the curving metal, turned tall and thin.  That's it.  That's--

"No," he says, barely recognizing the voice in his ears.  "Not quite."

** xiv. what it takes **

His head is buzzing and it takes him three tries to get the door to Taub's apartment open, but that's okay.  He has an idea.  He's read so many files, Primatech and Pinehurst and the Sureshs' and Building 26, and there are patterns to abilities, broad spectrum bands into which they fall.  Similar powers turn up all over the place, matches like Adam Monroe and Claire Bennet, West and Nathan, close like Arthur and Peter Petrelli and Sylar.  Somewhere in there, there's someone close enough to Molly for grunt work.

Micah drops the gear from Radio Shack on the floor with his laptop.  On the coffee table, he places the cheap tat ornament he ended up buying from street vendor to break his notes so he had exact fare for the buses.  Exact fare is good.  It makes you invisible.  He starts stripping wires, plugging things in, connecting laptop to phone, phone to transceiver, transceiver to the box attached to the traffic camera down the street.  Ten thousand eyes.  A hundred thousand.  He knows what to look for.

"I have a plan," he says.

Road after road flicks across the laptop screen, car after car, license plate after license plate.

Sylar picks the ornament up, holds it up to the light.  It's plastic, an almost filled bubble.   When he shakes it, glitter snow tumbles across a rainbow-ringed map of Oregon.

Virginia claps and laughs.  The laptop bleeps a hit.

** xv. be seeing you **

In other circumstances, Micah would have stopped to admire the set-up.  The sixteen wheeler rig had been done out, mobile-home style, half curtained off for haulage, half filled with bed and books, TV, games consoles, DVDs.  The cartoon characters on the bedspread/throw rug were a little childish, and Micah would personally have left out all the mirrors, but still.  A mobile arcade you can sleep and eat in?  Pretty cool.  In other circumstances.

"Mister White?" he asks the man inside, the tall, well built man in the blue jeans and vest top, black wings tattoo peeking out across his shoulders, the man who has had his back to Micah the whole way across the noisy parking lot and isn't even slightly startled.  "Robert White?"

There's a hefty Santa chuckle.  White says, "Call me Bobby, man."

Micah's all set to run his spiel, and then White throws him by shoving a huge hand out at him.  It dwarfs Micah's own, and White holds the shake just slightly too long.  Micah's mind goes to all sorts of bad places, and suddenly he's sure this is a really bad idea, but it's the only idea he has.  People are going to die without this, lots of who didn't do anything more criminal than get born special.

"What can I do you for?" White asks.  "Come up back."  There's nothing else for it, so he does.  The hand to help him up is only polite.  "You got a name, soldier?"

For a moment, his mind is a complete blank.  He looks around, like maybe for inspiration.  There's a camera watching him and he turns it off automatically.  While he's distracted, White casually palms a button set high enough up that Micah would need a step and a jump to reach it.  The doors close automatically behind them.

"Don't need everyone walking past to get in our business, right?" White asks.  He licks his lips.

Nerves, Micah thinks.  "I know your secret," he blurts, which is probably the worst thing ever.  "I-- I mean, I know, you're special."

"Special," says White.  It's Tracy all over again.

"I'm special too," Micah says.  He stares at the TV until it comes on bright, static hissing.

"Cool beans," White says, dropping onto the bed-couch-thing.

"I need your," Micah says, and blinks stupidly because White is somehow holding a gun on him.  "Help."

"Where's your friend?"

"It's just me," Micah says. White waggles the gun. "I mean, he's staying back."

White's eyes bulge a little, return to normal.  He seems satisfied.  "So, what is this?  Blackmail?"  He drags his gaze up and down Micah.  "Bribery?"

"You can see things," Micah says, "not just looking, but everything, right?  Inside and outside.  They call it clairvoyance."

"I know what they call it," White says.  "Never been one for fruity names, myself.  I call it seeing.  Comes in right handy."

Micah knows this.  White prefers cash, but there are ways and means and Micah knows he wins games and races much more than he should do.  Aladdin's singing in his head, one jump ahead of the slowpokes, one skip ahead of his doom.  There are Disney DVDs on the shelves, a cartoon parrot sticker on the X-Box.

"There's a building," Micah says.  "A prison, where they put people like us.  The government, they're looking for us--"

"Petrelli's goons," White nods.  "Like to knock people out."

"You know?  Right, you know.  They're not going to do that, soon.  They're just going to shoot us.  They're going to kill everyone they already have.  We have to stop them."

White laughs his Santa laugh again.  It's an oddly hollow sound.  It echoes strangely in the enclosed space.  "Is that what 'we' have to do?  Don't move your hands," he snaps before Micah even thinks about it.  "I like you right there.  Fact, you should give me a turn."

Micah blinks at him.  "Turn?"

"Slow," White agrees.  "Once right around.  Show me you're not carrying weapons."  He gestures with his own gun, like he thinks Micah might have forgotten it's there.

"I'm not armed," Micah says, lifting his hands and turning -- "Slower!" White orders -- around.  "I'm not trying to blackmail you, or get you in trouble with the police.  I'm just--  You can use your powers for good.  You can save people.  They're going to die without you.  You can make a difference."

White hasn't listened to a word.  He's licking his lips again.  Micah's stomach twists.  "Yeah," White says.  "That's the stuff."

"You can save people," Micah repeats desperately.  "You know about Petrelli -- about Danko.  You--"

"Yeah, I know," White says.  "I throw them a bone now and again, tell them where they can find one of you lot.  I travel around, see, and the freaks, well, they glow right pretty.  It keeps them off my back.  They know they can't sneak up on me, not now I know to look out for the black guy.  He your dad or something?  Don't reckon you're old enough for teenage rebellion.  That's okay, though.  I like them..."

He trails off, thoughtful.

"Oh," White breathes.  "You're him, aren't you.  You're Rebel.  Ohh, man.  You have, you have no idea how perfect this is."

Micah can hear Sylar whispering in his ear.  Sound projection, Micah thinks, Jesse's ability; Sylar always finds new and interesting ways to use things.  He can't concentrate enough to make out the words.  A flicked look starts the doors opening and gets a bullet so close his hair singes.  No one comes running.  Micah doubts anyone outside is close enough to hear.

"You're my golden ticket, boy," White says.  "You're my fortune and my freedom.  Gonna have us a bit of fun first, though.  Don't look so worried.  You'll like it in the end.  They all do."

Sylar is whispering in his ear.  Telling him things, obscene, terrible things.  Things that White has done.  Things that White wants to do.

"You don't have to do this," Micah says.  "You don't have to be like this.  You can be a hero."

White guffaws.  "Son, the only real hero is a dead one.  The living are all shits.  They deserve everything they get.  Hell, some day, some lucky punk is gonna catch me napping, blow my brains out, I reckon.  We're all mortal.  You've got to get in quick, enjoy it while it's ripe."

Micah wants to throw up.  He wants to cry.  His feet want to move, but there's another shot, to the other side this time.  The doors are open.  They could be a billion miles away.

"Reckon your friends abandoned you," White says.  "Seriously, son.  Didn't your parents ever teach you 'Stranger, Danger'?"

Something flares up inside him, a hot white core, like punching Damon, but stronger, harder.  Sylar's saying, he's a killer, a pervert.  Sylar's saying, no remorse, no compassion.  Sylar's saying, people are going to die, and, we need his power, and, parents should protect their children, shouldn't they?

There's a photo on the wall, White with a thick arm slung around the shoulders of a thin boy with a face like his, a weak smile and dark circled eyes.

The doors are open.  White's looking at him in confusion, eyes bulging a little.  His mouth is moving, but Micah can't hear him.  Sylar is too loud.  Sylar is saying, he's going to hurt you and kill you, and then he's going to do it again to others, and Danko is going to kill everybody.  West and Sparrow and Abigail.  Molly. Sylar is saying, just say the word.  Be the hero.

Micah closes his eyes.  "Do it."

The doors are wide open.  White makes a startled squeak of a noise.

Sylar grins and lifts a hand.

** xvi. the kid grows **

He vomits color all over the white porcelain.

There are spots on Micah's T-shirt.  He thinks they should still be wet, but they've dried in, gone rust brown.  They could be anything.  Sauce from some too enthusiastic, too sloppy dinner.  He turns the faucets on full, cupping his hands in the spray and throwing it in his face, scrubbing at himself.  It hurts to breathe.  His throat burns.  He splashes himself again, scrubs harder.

When Micah looks up, he can see Sylar's eyes in the mirror, blank and pitiless as the sun.


	3. Chapter 3

** xvii. hung on the telephone **

It's too bright out. The streets are covered in dust.  Micah doesn't know how he got here, or where here is, exactly, but there's a phone -- no booth, just a box on a pole jutting out of the street, a pole that's been hit by a car a time or two and taggers almost constantly.  It smells of pee and paint and the phone is sticky under his fingers, crackling against his ear.  A car thunders by, heavy guitars screaming out the windows.  Micah presses himself against the metal and dials with trembling, reluctant fingers.

The phone rings forever.

He can't remember what time it is in India.  His thoughts keep slipping.  It's late, probably.  Maybe too late -- and that startles a laugh out of him.  It comes out wrong, doesn't sound like him at all.  Micah angrily rubs his eyes on his sleeve.  The phone clicks and he's said "Molly?" before he's fully realized it's been answered.

There's a startled silence at the other end, and then Mrs Suresh says, "Hello?"

"Hey, Mrs Suresh," Micah manages.

"Is that-- Micah?"

"Yes, ma'am. I-- Is it late?  I'm sorry, I didn't--"  He can't seem to end his sentences.  "Is, is Molly there?  Please?  I need to--  I really need to talk--"

"Micah," Mrs Suresh interrupts, sadness in her voice, and concern too.  Micah squeezes his eyes shut.  "Are you hurt?"

"I-- Hurt?"  He doesn't know how to answer that.  "No."

"Things are not well," she says.  It's a statement, not a question.

"I'm not doing so good," Micah admits.  "Please, can-- May I talk to Molly?"

"Are you alone?  Is there someone there who can help you?"  They way she says 'someone', Micah knows she means an adult.  He has a sudden bizarre urge to giggle, to say 'no-one here but us orphans, ma'am', but he doesn't do either.  Mrs Suresh is saying "--and find Mohinder, I am sure he would take you in."

"I can't do that," he says.

"I really think--"

"I can't, Mrs Suresh," Micah says.  "It's not-- It's complicated.  It's not safe."

"Young man," she says, and there's a touch of exasperation now, affection too.  "Part of growing up is learning that not only can you not solve every problem by yourself, but that you do not need to do so.  Independence must be tempered by reason."

"I know that--"

There's a soft noise that might almost be a laugh. "You are as stubborn as my son."

"Mrs Suresh--"

"There is a greater order," she says, kindly, "of which you are a part; a natural cycle that turns through all things, that guides the stars and the seasons, that connects us all down through the ages, parent to child."

He doesn't think about Niki.  He doesn't think about D.L., about Virginia, Martin, Samson.  He doesn't think.  He can't.  He can't breathe.

Mrs Suresh is saying, "if not by blood, still there is family; there is community.  You are brave boy, Micah, I believe that, and a smart boy, and I want you to think about this.  Sometimes the true face of bravery is accepting the sanctuary and guidance offered by those who have the benefit of experience.  I know your mother and father have passed on, but--"

"JUST PUT MOLLY ON THE DAMN PHONE!"

He doesn't mean to scream.  It just comes out like that.  The silence that follows is even louder.

"Sorry," he mumbles, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-- please, Mrs Suresh--"

"We can not help those who refuse to help themselves," Mrs Suresh says quietly.  "I do not think you should call here again."

He wails, "I'm sorry!"

She whispers, "Alvida, Micah -- good luck."

"Please," he says, but there's no one there.  The drone mocks him.

Micah tries to put the receiver back on its hook, but it slips.  He does it again, with more force, and then again, and again, harder and harder, pounding the cheap plastic against the implacable metal.  There's a noise, a rising, inarticulate gurgle of almost-words; he thinks it's the phone, except it splinters and smashes, cuts his knuckles and the noise keeps going, becomes an anguished howl.  It hurts his throat.  He bites it off, shoving himself away from the phone, and turns.

There's blue, and he actually thinks it's Matt Parkman for a second, which is insane, but it's just some cop, yelling at him.  Micah has to rub at his eyes to get them to focus properly, and now the man is right there in front of him, waving a hand at the broken phone and demanding explanations.  The receiver hangs on its cord, swinging gently, dragging a mess of wires and speaker back and forth above the dust.

The cop's voice softens.  Pity darkens his eyes, and he reaches out to touch Micah.

The click of the taser is whisper quiet; the resulting buzz is not.  The man jerks, falling back, shaking and clutching at his leg.  Micah takes two steps backwards, and then spins, breaks into a sprint.  Pushing harder and harder until there is no room in his head for anything but motion, he runs as if he could leave the whole world behind.

** xviii. rage against **

Sylar is in fine spirits.  Kid with a new toy.  He's got a touch of the nosy neighbor about him.  Maybe it's just television upbringing; now he has his personal Real World, Big Brother, reality on demand.

Micah's trying to concentrate, trying to find the shadows of shadows, the deliberate glitches in the data-streams that hide secrets he should know, trying to find something, anything, no matter how small, no matter how tangential.  He's trying to concentrate.

Sylar laughs. "You would not even believe these people!"

There's a retort on his tongue, but he bites it off.  His fingers needlessly hammer the keys.

"The old lady in four-ten has got herself a toy-boy, and so does the guy in four-oh-seven, and neither of them have cottoned on that it's the same one.  He just takes the elevator down to the lobby, waits a couple of minutes and goes right back up.  You gotta admire the balls of the kid."  Sylar chuckles at the unintentional wordplay.

Micah rolls his eyes.

"And that young lady in two-twelve -- demure little thing, dresses like a nun and half-sounds like one too -- she's only growing pot in her bathroom.  Got big sun lamps set up and everything.  You never really know people, huh?"  Sylar grins at him.

Micah finds his screen fascinating.  Sylar swings around in his seat, sits forward, stares intently. Micah watches windows and tabs flick open and closed.

"This is what you wanted, remember?" Sylar asks, tone oddly serious.  "You wanted me to be able to see inside.  And now I can.  You should be pleased."

"Yeah," Micah says, not looking up, tone deliberately bored.  "Voyeur of the year.  Congrats."

The wall punches him in the back.  Micah tries to move, but there are hands he can't see, holding him tight to the cracked plaster.  He should be afraid, but he's having the weirdest moment of déjà vu.  White dust tumbles across his shoulders like dandruff.  That really is some poor workmanship, he thinks wildly.

"Say that again," Sylar says, quiet, dangerous.

"You heard," Micah says.  "All that power and you're just another cheap--"

His jaw snaps shut despite his efforts to continue.  Sylar lifts a finger to the height of Micah's forehead, pointing dangerously.  "Is this what you want?  Is this what you're here for?"

Micah struggles, but he can't move more than banging his head back against the wall.  "Do it."

Sylar stares.

"Do it!" Micah yells.

"No," Sylar says and whirls away without warning, throwing a hand out.

The couch jerks into the air and then whistles across the room, smashing through the front door of the apartment, the men in fatigues outside, and the door of the apartment opposite without slowing.  Two arms reach around the remains of the doorway, firing at Sylar.  The darts pass easily over Micah's head, crackling when they hit the wall, by which time Micah has already snatched up his laptop and dived for the window.  It opens to let him out on the fire-escape.

More of the taser darts come shooting towards them, only to abruptly loop back on themselves at Sylar's glare, sending the gunmen diving.  He waves the bookcases over and flicks out his other hand, igniting them with a burst of electricity for good measure.  Taub really wasn't going to get his deposit back.  Not bothering with the ladders, Sylar hops over the railing and lets himself drop.  A quick telekinetic push slows him enough to land gently.

More men appear ahead of them, hefting heavy-duty automatic rifles.  Danko isn't skimping.  It's almost flattering.  Bullets hiss past.  Reaching out for every car he can -- and thank you, modern engineering, for filling them full of computers -- Micah pushes and two dozen engines roar to life at once, alarms blaring, noxious smoke belching.  Over the distraction, no one hears timbers give way but, as Micah sprints for the nearest gap, the falling water tower is quickly spotted.

The men pull back with impressive speed; it's still too slow.  The tower strikes, crushes a car and explodes, broken timbers bursting away at break-neck speeds, gallons of waters crashing down over the soldiers, knocking them down, into cars and walls.  Some, managing to keep a hold of their weapons, fire blindly in Micah's direction.  He falls back, realizes there is an open car behind him, and dives in.

A flicked out hand, fingers curling in, and Sylar sends another blast of electricity arcing out, striking the water and leaping from car to car.  There are screams and explosions and Micah curses, sending their own vehicle charging backwards, scattering the last of Danko's men as they barrel through them.  Sylar waves the car doors closed, clambering into the driver's seat and taking control.

They are on the highway in minutes, and he slows down to match the traffic, weaving effortless between lanes the second gaps open.

"That was fun," Sylar says cheerfully.

Micah curses again, at length.  "You could have -- we could have killed those people!"

"The ones shooting at us?"

"You can't die!"  The rebuttal to that is so obvious Micah doesn't let him make it.  "We're supposed to be -- we have to be better than them."

"Did you want to be caught?" Sylar asks.  Micah just glares.  "You're a hero.  You don't get the luxury of regret."

They drive in silence for a few miles, and Sylar eases them out of traffic, finding somewhere to park so they can ditch the car and take another.

ATMs, Micah thinks.  Rail tickets and bus passes.  Breaking and entering.  Terrorism.  Murder.

"Now what?" Sylar asks, clearly amused.

"We get the job done," Micah says, thinly.  "We make it count."

** xix. scope **

There's a learning curve.  There always is with new powers.  But his own, the only one that's really his -- the first -- that helps.  Sylar understands things.  He knows how they work.  He takes them apart and puts them back together again, better than new.

Micah thinks of laptops, of yelling Grandfathers, barely seen before, never seen again.

Sylar rubs at his eyes in annoyance.  It feels like his retinas are crawling around in his eyeballs.  Maybe they are, shifting rods and cones and whatever else to let him see outside the usual visible spectrum.  Maybe it's some kind of magnetic resonance thing, or super sonar.  Maybe it's just plain psychic.  It itches, is the point, and it's not like you can scratch the backs of your eyes.  Well, he probably could, because they'd grow back.  That'd be kind of gross, though.

His hands glow again, writing more floor plans onto scrap paper.  Who knew that imprinting thing would have an actual use beyond a really lazy way to sign things?  And faking divorce papers to mess with Bennett's head.  Heh.  Fun times.

The building, the super-prison, is a sprawling mess of a place.  The warehouse looking building seems to be mostly for show, though it has some support staff working in it.  Most of the complex spreads below ground, all branching corridors and separated cells and endless checkpoints.  There are vents, though, and abilities that make them usable.  He'd heal afterwards, probably, but Sylar really doesn't want to be diced by a fan first to test the theory.

He prints out faces where he can see them.  They're harder to focus on than walls or doors, and the pictures come out blurry, from odd angles, but he figures it's good enough for hero work, and says so.

Micah just rolls his eyes.  When he picks up his laptop, he discovers the screen is cracked, the keyboard smashed, and a bullet hole right through the hard drive.  Sylar smirks at him.  Micah refuses to rise the bait and pulls his phone out instead.  The screen is scratched, but it's still workable.

There's no real reason to suppose Danko would be looking for them here, of all the places they could be, but the longer it takes to find a workable entrance, the more worried he gets.  No one seems to be gearing up to shoot all the prisoners yet, but it's only a matter of time, and even with floor plans and names, kicking their way in the front is not very sensible.  Which leaves--

"Got one," Micah says, dropping the phone onto the dash.

** xx. trojan **

Lenny Brown has a girlfriend he'll never marry, despite the continuous objections of both their mothers, and two kids at least he's sure are his.  He likes the Red Sox, more before they started winning again though he'll never admit that, and he catches every game he can, always with a beer or three, and afterwards, he sneaks out and has a cigarette, just like he and his dad always used to, even though he's promised to give up a half-dozen times.  Sometimes his girlfriend threatens to get the butts in the trash DNA tested, to prove they're his, but Lenny works for the government and he figures he could just get the results altered.

It's gone overcast by the time he gets to work, and he complains about the weather with the gate guard while they check him and his car over.  The weatherman said it would be bright all day.  Lenny wonders if maybe one of the freaks they keep locked here could do that, like Storm out of the movies.  He tries not to think about it too much, though.  You can drive yourself mad, wondering what else is out there, especially now they're saying Sylar isn't as dead as Danko made out.  They're tricky bastards, these.  Could be anyone.

He leaves the car in its designated spot, and heads on down, nodding at each of the cameras as he passes, knowing some poor bastard somewhere is having to check the damn things and log everything.  Paperwork is a bitch.  Danko getting rid of Petrelli hasn't made a difference to that.  A few guys say hello, and he nods back, and finds his way to the locker room.  It's quiet morning.  There's a grill on the wall above the lockers, and a camera, and a small red light that flashes at him while he pulls his jacket off.  Flash, flash.  Flash.

Flash.

An alarm goes off, code 14, potential invasion at the gate, but when the others come in, there's no-one in the room at all.

** xxi. in the belly **

The vents are cramped and pulling yourself around them is a really good way to develop claustrophobia, but it gets you where you need in a pinch. He may not have Charlie's memory but his own is enough to navigate. Micah takes care of the fans and each of the cameras in turn, until they get down into the detention block proper. The cameras here are all on separate circuits, but a rough equivalent of X-ray vision lets you see where they're all bundled together as the feed into the guard room, and telekinesis is designed for these movement-at-a-distance tasks. It's in the name and everything. There's barely a flicker as the same twelve seconds of footage start looping on the screens.

There's no quiet way of getting out -- there's only so long security can be dodged -- but they have a plan, at least: a minimum of fuss, a found exit that's the hardest for the guards to hold, a few well placed distractions. It's not strategic genius, but it's workable, so long as the people inside are willing to follow directions, have a little bit of common sense. Like, not biting the hand that frees them.

They start with cages furthest away from the exit. It's slow going. The security systems have to be constantly jiggled to keep them clear. Everything is alarmed, to a level that would probably be considered insane under other circumstances. All the alarms come with anesthetic gas cylinders attached as they find out the hard way, only Micah shoving the fans up to full keeping them on their feet.

Sylar recognizes Meredith Gordon, which comes as a bit of a surprise, though maybe it shouldn't. Perhaps dead is not so much dead after all. Meredith doesn't recognize him, seems confused when Micah talks to her. Heat comes off in her waves. The few prisoners they already released won't stay close to her. It makes things complicated. They're too spread out, too obvious, and most of them don't seem to be able to activate their powers yet.

"The drugs must have been changed," Micah says, but it comes out like a question, and he gives up trying to guide Meredith on and hurries to the next cell, and the next.

Sylar's watching for guards, expecting patrols, and people are certainly moving, but they seem to be mostly circling above. He thinks of vultures, thinks of the heat in the desert, trying to find a road, civilization. His mouth is dry. Maybe that's just Meredith. He tries to concentrate on the people in the cells, but they're moving strangely too. The things are sound proofed, have no windows, but half the people inside, more than half now, seem almost ... anticipatory.

He's been in cells. Mostly he was drugged, though, so maybe this is normal. He remembers Bennett and his ball (where had he gotten that from?) and the endless bang-bounce, bang-bounce. He-- Had lost track of things for a moment, apparently, because now there's a small crowd milling behind him as he moves down the corridor.

A breeze rifles through his hair, and he glances automatically at the air vents before realizing it's coming from an older woman with a shock of hair. She couldn't have been in here long, but there's something missing in her eyes, like she's been a prisoner for a very long time. The ticking starts up inside his head. His mouth is dry and he licks his lips and her eyes flick his way for the barest fraction of a second. The breeze gets stronger, a proper wind now.

Someone's going to come, he thinks and, like they were summoned by his thoughts, he can suddenly seem them, approaching down the side-corridor, guns at the ready. He goes to meet them, bored of this skulking, of the way one moment bleeds into another, tense and bored all at once so he can't keep track of time. They come at him, all force and fire, but before he do anything there's a howl more inhuman than the wind and Meredith catches fire. Everything catches fire.

He almost feels bad for injecting her that time.

Then Micah is there and it's raining around them and he's yelling, "no, no more killing!" and the water's not just coming from the sprinklers but just falling out of the air. It's screwing up Bobby's power, because he keeps seeing movement but there's nothing, and he doesn't have time to concentrate. Micah is there again, no finesse now, just forcing the cells open, not waiting for people to come out before he's onto the next.

"Run!" he yells at them. "Just run."

They don't. Rather, one or two try, but they are cut down before they get that far. Something hits Meredith in the shoulder, sends her spinning. She falls to the floor, stays there, guttering in the downpour. More shots. Micah is yelling, "Stop it! Just stop it!" Hurricane wind, and he can't tell where the attack is coming from, all he can see is the escaped prisoners--

Oh, he thinks, and finds himself smiling at the absurdity, the ingenuity of it. Danko does have his moments.

And the weather lady suddenly gets it and swings back, but there's a just opened cell behind her, and a well built man in an orange jumpsuit that really doesn't conceal the gun he's pulling all that well. Sylar flicks out a hand, sending the man flying backwards, smashing him into the wall. Micah jumps in, slamming the door, locking it with swipe of his hand. A bullet hits the door, ricochets.

Micah is screaming "You don't have to do this!" but no-one is listening. No-one at all.

The rain's still everywhere, he can't risk Elle, but Jesse gets a scream in that clears some room. He's backing up the corridor when he sees them come up behind him and turns in time for the bullet to get him right between the eyes. There are no pain receptors in the brain, but Sylar thinks he can feel the tunneling, the compression and tearing of flesh, the bone shards blossoming out from the point of impact.

There's black, then red, then a searing headache that makes everything flash white behind his eyes. The rain has reduced to a fine mist. He thinks he sees Niki's face in the puddle around him for a second. The water is tinged red. There are bodies. None of them are Micah. He briefly wonders why. Feeling returns to his extremities with a sudden burning that fades to prickling pins and needles.

Danko is saying "--leave it in the sweet spot, or he'll--"

"Yeah," Sylar says, and then he's on his feet again. "About that--"

Bullets sizzle to a stop. Invisible force smashes the men apart, throws Danko into the wall.

"--I moved it."

It's like ballet. Or a, whatever you call ballet for two. A duet. It's something, whatever it is, and Sylar moves with ease, disarming and disabling the men and tossing them in ones and twos into cells and Micah is always right there to lock the doors, like telepathy or synchronicity or something. It takes seconds and then there's only Danko, backed up into the corner, lifting his gun.

Sylar laughs. "Go on," he says. "How many bullets do you have left?" Danko's hand is shaking. "Care to guess where you need to shoot?"

The shaking stops. Danko stops, most of him. There's a windy, whistling noise, a rustling, and something wrong with Sylar's vision. Danko's eyes move frantically, but his body doesn't move at all. Sylar turns slowly around as the wall ripples and then there's a liver-spotted hand, there's a foot in a well worn boot, there's a beard marred with grey, there's a whole man, with twinkling eyes and a chuckle.

"Hello, son," Samson says.

** xxii. to all things **

The sprinklers finally run down to drips that slow plop, plop, plop around them.  Danko's straining, silent, eyes screaming.  There are bodies around them.  Nothing but bodies.  Meredith steams.  There's no noise.

Plop.  Plop.  Plop.

Something pushes against him, and he pushes back until it slides away.  Stand-off, then.  Pieces slot together.  He's good at seeing patterns in the data.

Micah says, "Luke Campbell told them about you.  Robert White helped find you.  Danko brought you in.  He set this whole thing up to get at us."

"Smart boy," Samson says, chuckling.  "Bit late to notice now, but you're right.  It's all his fault."

"Set a Grey to catch a Grey," Sylar says.  "He's done it before.  Everyone tries to deal.  Angela.  Arthur.  Danko."  Micah.  "Even you; begging me to kill you.  And yet here you are."

"Here I am," Samson agrees.  "You should have known better," he adds to Danko.  "Rabbits can't make deals with hunters."

Something flashes in Sylar's head, an image, Micah slammed back against a cracked wall, dust falling.  He shakes it off, asks, "Now what?"

"You have cancer," Micah says with sudden suspicion.  Samson looks at him curiously.  "You're sick."

"Do you believe in fate?" Samson chuckles.  "I was expecting a pick-up the day you came to me.  There was a veterinary surgery, you see, that sometimes brought me dead pets to stuff for families that just couldn't bear to see Fluffy leave."

Samson chuckles again.  It becomes a cough.  He starts rasping, hacking, face turning red.  This should be their moment, but they're just watching, short-circuited.  Samson grabs at his own chest and there's this glow and they can see his bones through his hands, see his body, cartoon x-ray.  His breathing clears and his face too.  He chuckles.  "Not quite what you have, son, but a good stop-gap."

"You killed Gabrielle," Micah says.

Samson blinks at him.  "Was that her name?  Well, of course I did, son.  It's who we are."

"Not any more," Sylar says.  There's no strength in it.  No resolve.  It's just words.

"Look at you.  What have you become?"  Samson tuts.  "All that switching back and forth between faces.  That can't be good for a man.  What have you got to hold on to?"

"What have you?" Sylar asks.  "You're still dying."

Samson chuckles.  "We all are.  Even you -- oh, yes, one day, even you.  There's always a bigger fish, son.  I understand that now.  You can swim side by side for a while, but sooner or later, it's kill or be killed.  That's all there is."  

"Then why come here?" Sylar asks.  "Elaborate suicide?"

"To test myself!" Samson's eyes burn with fresh purpose.  "To become the biggest fish, to fight the best.  A prison where they keep the worst of the worst?  Of course I had to come.  To fight, to win, or die.  It's evolution: survival of the strongest!"

"It's fittest," Micah corrects.  He's trying to be reasonable but it feels like his head is going to explode.  There's fresh blood all over his sneakers.  "It's not strongest.  It's not about defeating things, it's about being able to change.  Not force; adaptability.  And--"

"And who adapts more than us, son?  Who changes more than us?  We add their differences, their abilities to our own.  You, though."  Samson stabs a finger at him.  Sylar thinks of skulls sliced open.  "You don't even know who you are from one minute to the next, do you?  Today's hero, tomorrow's villain, the clown, the killer, the good son, the bad boy.  There is only predator and prey.  If you're not one, you're the other."

Sylar takes a deliberate step forward.  Samson points a hand at Danko; heat ripples; Danko writhes.  Luke's power, Sylar thinks.

"Stop it!" Micah yells.  He might be crying.  It must just be the sprinklers.  "Just stop it!  What is wrong with you people?!"

"Why do you care?" Samson asks.  It could almost be a genuine question.  "Danko understands it.  The government understands it.  They know they're prey.  They come at us, hoping for safety in numbers, hoping their tools, their computers and satellites, their drugs and guns, can make a difference.  But deep in their hearts, they know there is an order to this world, and they are not at the top of it, and it scares them more than anything."

There is as much rage as naked fear in Danko's eyes.  He can't open his mouth.

"Please," says Micah.  It comes out flat, monotone, exhausted.  "Why can't you just stop?"

"We can't help fighting.  It's in our nature."  Samson smiles.  "It's destiny, written in our genes.  Everything we do leads to death."

D.L.  Niki.  All the others.  White.  Sylar stares at him.

"Nothing to say?" Samson asks.

Micah whispers, "You have a pace-maker."

Samson looks confused.  There's no time for him to look worried.  Agony comes first, and he clutches at his chest, trying to stop his heart racing, faster and faster.  His hands begin to glow, but it's weak, flickering thing.  Samson staggers, careens off the wall, stretches one blue-fingered hand out towards Micah as he falls.  His other hand scrambles uselessly at his chest as he twists and flops, like a fish out of water.  Eventually, he stills.

Micah thinks he should feel something, but he doesn't.  He doesn't feel anything.

"Monster," Danko forces out.  What Samson did is wearing off.  Not enough for him to lift the gun, though he's clearly trying, knuckles white, wrist straining.  "You're all monsters."

Micah shakes his head.

"Everything you do, all of it, it ends in death," Danko insists.  "It only ever ends in death.  You kill us.  You kill each other.  For what?  For nothing.  You're all--"

"We," Micah corrects.

Danko blinks at him.

"It's 'we'," Micah says, tonelessly.  "We're all monsters."

He lifts a hand.

** xxiii. kiss kiss bang bang **

There's a sound too low to really be called a sound.  It's a rumble felt in the bones, as if it began deep inside and is aching to get out.  The whole complex shimmers like heat-haze -- no: it vibrates; then it simply collapses, folding inwards like falling cards.  The explosions that follow, as severed gas lines meet arcing power lines, are rather more conventional, but no less destructive.  Thick brown smoke gouts into the air.  Flames, white and blue, yellows, reds and oranges follow.  The ground breaks.  The grass blackens.  Slowly, in the far distance, sirens begin to sound an alarmed crescendo.

**_fade out:_   
xxiv. you can be me when I'm gone **

The engine revs quietly, the road a soft hiss beneath the wheels.  The evening turned out clear after all, pink and purple as a bruise.

Micah looks at the phone.  The screen is scratched and dark, but there's still a signal.  There's a signal.  He could call anyone.  After a moment, he twists around and tosses it into the back seat.  It bounces off the ruin of his laptop, skids to the edge and falls.  Micah expects it to clatter under the front seats, but instead it lands on a blue jacket.  It takes him a moment to recognize it as his.  It's been so long since he wore it, and it's drenched in blood.

Sylar glances at the mirrors, puts his hands on the wheel of the car.  It purrs under him.  The sat-nav blinks on, drawing out routes.  The radio comes up, sliding through the stations before finding some Seventies station and Bowie, singing, we can beat them, just for one day.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

Setting their back to the sunset, they drive on into the night.


End file.
